


angel

by cottoncandychannie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Country AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, More tags to be added, Romance, Soft Chanyeol, baekhyun is a neglected city boy, baekhyun needs a hug, side ships to come, sorta roommates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 03:45:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14179839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cottoncandychannie/pseuds/cottoncandychannie
Summary: For years all Baekhyun has known is an empty house, neglect, and being treated worse than dirt. One day, his parents make a decision they think will finally rid themselves of him that ends up being his saving grace.





	angel

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my first (published) attempt at a chanbaek fanfic. please be nice, harsh, loving, or whatever you feel like in the comments. I welcome all kinds of criticism, you won't hurt my feelings if you're mean. If this is trash, I'd love to know.

There never really was anything too over the top special about the city. Most of the tall skyscrapers disappear into the haze of smog that filters from the factories only to drape across the city like some kind of dank, gross blanket nobody wanted anymore. By day the streets are crowded with all sorts of different people trying to get to work or school on time and by night there are drunk stragglers stumbling home or the rare teenager sneaking out to get a cup of ramen at the convenience store on the corner. There’s nothing special about the endless line of chicken restaurants or the chewing gum forever stuck to the sidewalk from being stepped on by millions of soles. There is nothing unique about constant pandemonium of police sirens or the tiny, cramped apartments.

But as he sits on a bench outside his apartment complex, Baekhyun realizes that there are some things within the city that were pure enough to make it just _slightly_ special. Like the kind, middle-aged woman who works at the small coffee shop a few blocks away who would always offer a warm hug and a shoulder to lean on whenever his parents would leave him alone again or forget his birthday or if he simply just needed help with his homework. She is more like a mother to Baekhyun more than his actual mother ever could be, could ever wish to be. Even if the air is full of pollution and makes it hard to breath sometimes, Baekhyun finds solace in the masks that cover his face when he feels the need to hide. Nobody will question him when the object is such a standard thing in their society.

Things like the sounds the city constantly produce that fill the sickening silence of his house that’s void of everything that turns a house into a home. Or like Jongdae, who befriended him straight away even after Baekhyun caused him to trip and ruin his favorite dinosaur shirt upon meeting in the third grade. Jongdae, who quickly became his best friend, who stuck with him throughout the last 8 years even when nobody else would. Jongdae, who is currently sprinting down the street, quickly turning from a speck in the distance to a blur right in front of Baekhyun’s face.

Jongdae grips Baekhyun’s shoulder to stabilize himself as he sways back and forth with a dizzy and confused look on his face. He looks as if he hasn’t run in years, which is probably not too far off from the truth. The required high school physical education twice a week and spending all his nights crouched in front of a computer playing video games in an internet café could only do so much for his endurance. The slightly taller male closes his eyes and takes deep breaths, his black hair glued to his forehead with sweat and his dark blue hoodie slightly twisted from the short sprint.

“Okay, okay. I’m good. I panicked there for a moment there, squirt. Thought I was going to miss you finally taking my advice to scram and get out of my hair.” Jongdae teases with a wink as he ruffles Baekhyun’s fringe.

_Maybe he wasn’t so special after all._

“Stop calling me squirt! I’m still growing and I’m older than you! And you know I don’t want to leave. I’m being forced into this. I don’t understand why my parents feel the need to ship me off to god knows where when they’ve left me alone for months before when I was younger.” Baekhyun huffs and crosses his arms.

“I know. Where are they anyways? Aren’t they going to at least say bye? This is the longest they’ve ever left you for. I understand the weekend business trips, but this is different. They are going overseas for an entire year.”

Baekhyun couldn’t stand to see the genuine concern in his best friend’s eyes and looks away with a sigh. Of course, his parents wouldn’t say goodbye to him. Sometimes he wonders why they even decided to have a son in the first place when the most they’ve ever done as actual parents was making sure he didn’t die as an infant and sending a check with funds for him to live off of once a month. As soon as he was old enough to reach the stove and take care of himself, they hired random nannies and took off across the world. The nannies never stayed though. As soon as his parents left for the airport they walked out the door only to come back for the paycheck. It was useless for Baekhyun to say anything about it though. Any word that came out of his mouth went through one of his parent’s ears and out the other. They just mindlessly nodded along and continued on with their business, saying that he was too young to understand anything about adulthood. Disregarding him became a common task they perfected over the years.

“No, they were gone when I woke up. They did leave a note this time though. It said, ‘be in the taxi @ 8am. See you.’ and that’s it. No, I love you. No, we will miss you. No, safe travels. No, have fun on your own in a strange town we are shipping you to because we don’t care enough to take you with us on vacation. I don’t even know why I was expecting anything more.” Baekhyun feels the burn behind his eyelids and he mentally forces the tears away, he would be strong this time, he just has to be.

“I’m sorry, Baek. I wish there was more I could do for you but with the twins here now my mother said we don’t have enough room or money to take in another mouth to feed. You know my mom sees you as one of her own children, and my dad told me to tell you that we would’ve taken you in if we could.” Jongdae sighs, his usual cherry attitude replaced by a more sullen and serious tone, as he leans back on the bench and tilts his head up to the sky.

“I know, Dae. I know.” Baekhyun whispers, his hair slightly blowing in the morning breeze.

Silence slowly drapes itself over the two teenagers, but neither of them mind. Baekhyun knows that they should be talking about everything and anything they can because soon he will be inside a car that’ll take him to who knows where for a year. He doesn’t know when he’ll have the chance to see his best friend again, but he just can’t bring himself to say anything. Instead they sit, basking in the feeling of having the other present while they still can.

Around them, the streets begin to burst with life as students race from their buildings to catch the early morning buses with breakfast either in baggies or hastily shoved in their mouths, trying to run and chew at the same time without choking. One woman comes out of the building across the street with a sleepy toddler hanging on her dress pants on one said and a tiny Pomeranian on a sparkling, silver leash on the other. It makes Baekhyun yearn for a puppy of his own. No matter how much he begged for one over the years, his parents never allowed it. Saying that dogs were too much work and would get hair on their precious furniture. Not that they were even around long enough to put the fancy chairs and hard couches to use. Men walk out all dressed in identical looking suits with the same colored brief cases. To Baekhyun, all the men looked the same. As if someone took one normal business worker and put him through a cloning machine a hundred times.

“Baek, if I ever become one of those men, please punch me in the face to get me back on track.” Jongdae says with a teasing yet serious tone as he watches the waves of lookalike men walk past in almost perfect sync. “What time is it?”

With a glance down and a click of his phone, Baekhyun says, “7:54.”

“Okay, I need to say this before you’re shoved in a car and hauled away from the city. I know you don’t want to go and I know inside of that pretty little head of yours, you’re thinking of how terrible the year is going to be and how much you’re going to miss your life here.” Baekhyun nods along, his ears and heart taking in his friend’s words, but his eyes train on the colorful leaves scattered on the sidewalk.

“But, try to make the best of it. Think of this as your second chance at life. Maybe here it wasn’t that great, but there, people won’t know you as Byun Baekhyun, the kid who likes to wish on the stars and gets pushed around by kids bigger than him at school. They’ll see you as the mysterious kid who showed up from the big city. They won’t know anything about you and they’ll probably be thrilled to see a new, fresh face in town. It’s your chance to start anew. And remember while you’re there that this boy over here is as single as an asexual gorilla. Don’t be afraid to slips some cute country girl my number while you’re at it.”

Jongdae slips his arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders and pulls the smaller boy closer to him. Baekhyun can feel the tears welling in his eyes and this time he doesn’t fight it and lets them drip down his smooth cheeks. Those words were exactly what he needed to hear, they would become his motivation, his comfort and strength to help him get through the next part of his life. A sob brakes through his chest and he turns to bury his face in his friend’s neck, the hoodie soft against his skin. Nobody could tell either of the boys what the next year would bring them, but Baekhyun will keep Jongdae’s words fresh in his mind forever.

The younger boy threads his fingers softly through Baekhyun’s fluffy brown hair with one hand and rubs his back with the other, “Only a fool would be willing to date you, you loser.”

A low chuckles rumbles from Jongdae’s chest at Baekhyun’s words that were slightly muffled by the fabric of his sweatshirt, “Maybe you’re right, so now I just need to track down that fool. And who knows maybe she’ll be your new neighbor. Just because you’re leaving doesn’t mean your very serious job as my wing man ceases to exist, it a 24/7 job, Baek.”

Baekhyun pushes the younger away and wipes his wet cheeks dry with the sleeve of his jacket. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, Jongdae.”

Jongdae puts both hands on each of Baekhyun’s shoulders and holds him at arm’s length, forcing Baekhyun to look at him, “Of course you do! You’re going to go and show those country hicks who Byun Baekhyun really is! Forget about your parents, they aren’t worth an ounce of your worry. They lost that privilege the moment they stopped caring about you. Now enough with all this sadness, wanna play this new game I downloaded on my phone before the cab shows up?”

The breeze flows through Baekhyun’s hair as he nods, ruffling the strands and making them fall into his eyes. He sweeps it off his forehead the best he can before it just falls back where it was before. If he can’t even keep his hair out of his eyes properly then how the hell is he going to last in a completely new town without anybody to rely on. God, Baekhyun feels like a failure, like one big huge mess that just needs to be removed from the world before he ruins something. Or worse, someone. He would hate himself for all eternity if he somehow ended up ruining someone’s life. If he was the reason for someone’s failure.

He mother used to tell him, back when she would say things to his face, that he was her biggest regret in life. At the time, it had broken him, spilt him in two and he had cried alone over it for days in the corner of his room. Not even Jongdae could pull him out of the cave he had built for himself. He had been twelve then. As a twelve-year-old hearing that you were your mothers biggest regret hurt. But now at nineteen with a freshly framed high school diploma, Baekhyun understands despite the deep sting he still carries around with him. The last thing he wants is to cause someone’s failure and that’s exactly what he almost did for his mother. Through his birth, she was forced to be distracted from her work and in turn almost caused her business’ stock to decrease. She had told him that if she hadn’t bribed the midwives to perform a C-section instead of natural child birth, she would’ve had to take even more time away from work to recover and that would’ve caused the company to suffer. She could deal with a scar but pushing her body to the limit just to deliver a mistake was never going to happen.

Through the years, his parents made it very clear to him that he was unwanted and didn’t matter. They engrained it into his mind and soul as a child and there was nobody ever there to shield him from their sick influence. He spent his infanthood in the care of random nannies without the knowledge of the comfort in a mother’s embrace. He spent his childhood sitting at the cold dining room table surrounded by harsh tutors and being subjected to his parent’s icy glare every time they came home to review how his education was coming. His teenage life was spent being bullied at school for a multitude of things and then coming home to be verbally abused about how worthless he is by the very people who created him.

It came to a point where he just had “you’re worthless” repeating like a mantra inside his brain at all times.

“Baek, are you even listening to me?” Jongdae asks, poking Baekhyun’s cheek to make his point even clearer. “You’ve been sitting there stuck inside your own head again. Come back to earth.”

“No, no. I’ve been listening!”

“Mhm, so what’d I say then?” Jongdae deadpans, a cat-like glint shining in his eyes.

Baekhyun goes silent once again and drops his eyes back down to his lap and fiddles with his fingers.

“That’s what I thought.” Jongdae shoves his phone back inside the pocket on his sweatshirt. “You know, Baek, I’m gonna miss you even if you don’t give me enough attention.”

“Just how much attention do you want, Dae?” Baekhyun laughs.

“I’m like a hyperactive golden retriever, I need all the attention in the world or I’ll be miserable, and everyone will be forced to listen to me scream and whine all the time!”

Baekhyun watches from the corner of his eye as a sleek black car rolls up in front of them, barley missing the puddle of water by the curb. “I’d say you’re more like a mischievous kitten and I’m not sure what world you live in, but you already scream and whine constantly so that wouldn’t be anything new to anybody.”

“I do not!” Jongdae whines, clearly proving Baekhyun’s statement and making the older boy snicker. “You know what, I changed my mind. Please go.”

Baekhyun pinches Jongdae’s cheeks, “Aw, I thought you were going to miss me so much!”

The two best friends don’t notice the middle-aged man watching their exchange with a very confused yet amused expression from his spot next to the now parked car.

“No, I changed my mind.” Jongdae looks to the man, “Are you here to get him?”

“Uh, are you Mr. Byun?” Baekhyun nods. “Then yes.”

Jongdae stands up and takes the duffle bag at Baekhyun’s feet while the driver takes one of his rolling suitcases. Baekhyun watches from his spot on the sidewalk bench in disbelief as Jongdae makes small talk with the man as they load his stuff into the trunk of the car.

Baekhyun stands up and rocks on the balls of his feet. He eyes the black car gleaming in the morning sunlight and has the sudden urge to bolt. He makes it about two steps before a strong hand wraps around his bicep and starts dragging him back to the car.

“They warned me that you might try to run, but my instructions were to get you to your destination using any method necessary. And frankly kid, I don’t want to be the bad guy here and hurt you, so please cooperate.”

Jongdae quickly comes to Baekhyun’s side and pries the man’s hand off Baekhyun’s arm as soon as he hears the words and sees his friend wince. Baekhyun is sure that his arm is going to bruise. “He won’t try to run again. So please let go.”

“I know he won’t. He looks scared enough right now. I’m sorry I had to do that, hurting you wasn’t my intention. Maybe I should properly introduce myself, so you can feel more comfortable with me. My name is Choi Kwang-Seon, you can just call me Mr. Seon. I’ll be your driver for the day.” Seon says, extending his hand for a handshake from both boys.

Baekhyun and Jongdae take turns gripping the mans hand and giving him a small bow out of respect as they also introduce themselves. He nods his head slightly and turns to get back in the car, telling Baekhyun he can have a minute for goodbyes before they have to leave.

Jongdae doesn’t waste time in pulling Baekhyun into him in a crushing bear hug. They truly don’t know when the next time they will see each other face to face is so the moment is even more precious. Birds chirp above them and leaves fall from the trees and fall to the sidewalk in an array of soft browns, reds, and oranges. Cars honk down the street and a lady yells as a teenager for causing her to drop her coffee because he was too busy texting to watch where he was going. The air smells of fried food and dirty, city musk but Baekhyun can only bury his head further in Jongdae’s sweatshirt.

Jongdae rubs circles on Baekhyun’s back and intakes a shaky breath. Trying to be strong as he sends his best friend off to a strange town. “You have to get going, Baek.” Jongdae whispers as Seon honks the horn and throws a hurry up motion at them through the window.  
“I don’t want to.” Jongdae pulls away from the hug and pushes Baekhyun towards the car.

“You have to. Remember, this isn’t goodbye, just see you later. I promise that I’m going to take every single shift I can at the studio and save up enough money until I can come visit. Noe go before Mr. Seon gets out of the car and forcefully drags you inside, he doesn’t look to happy to be waiting right now. You’ll be fine.”

Baekhyun slowly opens the car door and sinks into the backseat. Once he is fully in, Jongdae closes the door behind him, careful not to close it on his foot. Rolling down the window Baekhyun calls out, “I’m holding you to that promise, Kim Jongdae. Don’t get in too much trouble without me.”

“You know I will. Text me when you get there safely.”

Seon doesn’t waste time and starts the car. Before he can process it, the car is rolling down the street and Jongdae is becoming just a mere speck in the distance behind them. He didn’t even get to say a proper goodbye.

Baekhyun leans against the window and watches as the city he’s grown to know wizzes by and gets farther and farther away. Seon glances at him through the overhead mirror and takes in his probably pathetic looking self.

“Get comfortable, Kid. It’s gonna be a long ride.”

Baekhyun groans and tries to coke back the tears threatening to fall as the landscape outside his window quickly goes from tall skyscrapers and busy businesses to acres of lands and herds of cattle. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

**Author's Note:**

> i have a thing for making them suffer so sorry for that. this is going to be one long ass ride *finger guns at mark lee*


End file.
